


but you're never alone (inside of your head)

by aetherae



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Drama, During Timeskip (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Gen, Trauma, dimitri does not have a good time: the fic, i wanted to make myself depressed with this and i did it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:20:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27669463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aetherae/pseuds/aetherae
Summary: Dimitri survives the next five years with only himself and the dead for company—but that’s not entirely true.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Annette Fantine Dominic, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Ashe Duran | Ashe Ubert, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Blue Lions Students, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Dedue Molinaro, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Felix Hugo Fraldarius, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Flayn, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Ingrid Brandl Galatea, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Mercedes von Martritz, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & My Unit | Byleth, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 5
Kudos: 32





	but you're never alone (inside of your head)

**Author's Note:**

> dimitri is so sad and lonely and i just want to wrap him up in a hug—which naturally means i decided it would be a great idea to write about how his crippling loneliness and trauma drove him more and more insane when he was alone!! my boy deserves only nice things, but alas, i'll have to leave it up to someone else to give him those things because i sure won't LMFAO..... i am truly a sucker for angst and pain and suffering, what can i say.
> 
> also i get that it's a little more half-and-half with the be house, but i'm on a mission to have flayn considered as part of the bl and gd houses depending on the route, she deserves the be included and have friends!! yes this was important enough to me that i'm mentioning it here rather than at an end note!!!
> 
> WITH ALL THAT SAID THOUGH, i hope you enjoy this!

“No matter what happens, promise me that you will live to see your vengeance through, Your Highness! You must!”

With tears in his eyes and blood seeping through his clothes, Dimitri can only listen through a barred door as Dedue prepares to give his life so that Dimitri can escape from Fhirdiad Castle. His friend shoved him through the door and locked it behind him before Dimitri even had time to argue. Even now, he can hear the pounding of armored footsteps as the castle guards give chase. He has no time to waste.

“I will. I swear it.”

There’s a pause, but Dimitri can imagine Dedue smiling during that silence all too easily. The last time he will ever speak with his most cherished friend, and he must settle for only imagining what his final moments look like.

“Then go.”

Dimitri runs into the rain-soaked streets of Fhirdiad with only the light of dimmed street lanterns to guide his way, and he knows that from now on, he is truly, truly alone. Only the dead remain to speak with him.

 _Hurry!_ they plead with him, beg of him, scream at him. _Avenge us! Save us! Give us blood! Give us peace!_

But theirs aren’t the only voices he hears.

* * *

Cornelia announces his execution and the formation of the Faerghus Dukedom in one fell swoop, placing the entire city under lockdown before anyone even has the chance to consider leaving. She sends out Imperial troops armored in Faerghus colors—beasts in the shape of humans—under the guise of maintaining peace, but Dimitri knows the truth. The common citizen may not recognize the former prince of Faerghus on sight, but these soldiers all know to look out for blonde hair and fair blue eyes.

He thinks of Ashe unbidden, an old memory from when Dimitri thought he would be king one day. Not everything could be learned inside the polished halls of Fhirdiad Castle, from the sunlit classrooms of the Officers Academy. Poverty ran rampant across the Kingdom, food and resources as scarce as ever, and he knew things would only worsen before he ascended the throne. Even as king, he couldn’t hope to improve them if he knew nothing of them, and none knew better of the difficulties of the poor than Ashe.

“There were soldiers that patrolled every now and then, but they tended to avoid the slums,” Ashe told him, voice uncharacteristically tight and tense while his hands clenched into fists in his lap. “Crime was so rampant that they didn’t see much point in bothering. It was easier not to help us.”

Fhirdiad may be far from the slums in Gaspard lands, but Dimitri sees now how Ashe spoke the truth, even from the darkest corners and alleyways. Orphans beg at the feet of every soldier that passes through for food, coin, anything to help them, only to be beaten away by armored fists. The lucky ones manage to lift a coin purse when they are. The unlucky ones beg the next passerbys for bandages and medicine instead.

It makes him sick.

A girl no older than five cries at a soldier for food, and they slap her with the back of their mailed hand so hard Dimitri _hears_ the crack of her skull against the pavement. She doesn’t get up.

And Dimitri remembers that there’s no need to show mercy to beasts.

 _It’s not enough, my son_ , his stepmother says to him when his hands drip with blood, that soldier more a pile of shredded flesh and metal than a corpse. _This isn’t who we long to see rotting into the earth. You know that, don’t you? So why do you waste time here? Why haven’t you brought us my wretched daughter’s head?_

 _Because these rats deserve to suffer_ , he tells Patricia. 

Dimitri doesn’t know what his stepmother looked like when she died. They never found her body from the carnage of that day. He can never remember her face no matter how hard he tries, only her forlorn visage as she looked out the window. She appears to him with her head turned away, unsatisfied as if somewhere in the horizon, someone else will bring her the justice she seeks—as if someone else will bring her Edelgard’s head on pike—but he blinks and her ghost is gone.

There’s only Dimitri and a corpse, Dimitri and blood splattered across his body, Dimitri and his hands that shake with anger and agony and all the evils of the world etched into his palms.

He thinks of Ashe’s dreams to become a knight, how he said so readily, so easily, that if the goddess allowed it, he would be proud to serve Faerghus as a knight sworn to the king. That he believed Dimitri would rule the Kingdom justly, and that it would be his honor to uphold that rule when the time came.

There is no king to serve though, not even a prince. Faerghus only has whatever foul creature he’s become. He hopes that Ashe has given up on his dream. He hopes Ashe knows his dream is dead. Surely, that kind-hearted boy could find a new dream instead.

Dimitri only serves the dead now, and no true knight could honor the blood he wades through.

* * *

The chokehold over Fhirdiad tightens more and more as time passes, and more and more soldiers see fit to visit the slums for easy plundering. They take from those who have nothing to give, and Dimitri takes their black-hearted lives for it. Most of the time, it’s easy, his bare hands alone enough to rip them apart. Sometimes, it’s not. They come in pairs, in threes, in brigades more and more as of late. Perhaps one of them caught wind that something monstrous lurks within the slums. Some part of him knows it’s dangerous to act like this, that killing them all just brings more attention to himself.

They can’t bring attention to him though if they’re too dead to report back, and he buries that sensible part of himself alongside the kind-hearted prince some mistakenly believed him to be.

Besides, it doesn’t matter how many there are. It doesn’t matter how much they wound him. The pain is nothing compared to what he does to them in turn, made unrecognizable as humans on the outside just as they are on the inside. He won’t rest no matter how many swords or spears or arrows they leave in him. That’s not enough to stop him.

Blood loss, unfortunately, is.

“The key to sewing is patience,” Mercedes tells him in a memory as he attempts to thread a needle, his hands shaking from blood loss, from exhaustion, from his own weakness. He can’t remember the last time he found something to eat. “Whether you’re simply patching up a tear or working on complicated embroidery, you have to take it slowly. Trying to rush the work will ruin it, and you’ll just have to start all over again.”

He listens to the soft lull of Mercedes’ voice as he sews cuts and gashes closed, pulling slowly and firmly to ensure the stitches’ strength. It is, quite honestly, the best sewing he’s ever done. She would be proud of how even his stitches are. When he closes his eyes, he can imagine her gentle smile, how the sunlight streaming through the stained glass windows of the cathedral always shone down warmest on her. She would likely praise him for his work, commend him for what he’s done.

But he only has the dead, and they are not impressed.

 _How long do you mean to let us suffer like this?_ Lambert asks, his decapitated body holding his head against his stomach. Out of everyone, Dimitri finds it the most difficult to face his father. Every night, he watches as his father is beheaded once more in his dreams. Facing it again in the day only breaks his heart anew. _I asked only for vengeance, only for justice, yet even now you cannot fulfill your promise to us, to me. So afraid to leave home, so afraid to have even more blood on your hands, you would rather let us languish than do what must be done. Worthless. Pathetic. My own blood fails me so._

“I’ll leave as soon as I can! Please, believe me!” he pleads, shouting at an empty alley. 

The only response he receives is his own voice bouncing off the walls of the alley, echoing over and over: believe me, believe me, believe me. What a mistake that would be, to believe a wretch like him. He knows better than that, and so do his loved ones.

They don’t believe him even when he makes for the exit under the cover of night. They don’t believe him even when the blood of the guards dyes the cobblestone ground red, slashes across the archway of the gate in violent strokes. They don’t believe him even when he lifts a spear from a mangled corpse’s hand and finally leaves Fhirdiad behind, leaves a capital and country to rot while he flees into the wild.

 _Not good enough_ , they tell him, and as Dimitri presses his hand against his side, the fabric damp and sticky from where his stitches split open, he agrees.

* * *

As a child, he visited the Fraldarius estate more times than he could count, and without fail, Felix would drag him out to hunt every time.

“You might be pampered back in Fhirdiad,” he remembers Felix saying with all the haughtiness of a seven-year-old, Glenn and Sylvain laughing somewhere behind them while Ingrid held onto Glenn's hand and shook her head with a sigh, “but we’re on Fraldarius lands now, and on Fraldarius lands, you hunt for your food. Glenn said so.”

They never hunted together again, after Glenn died. Too many painful memories, and after the western rebellion, Felix outright refused every offer he made. He had no interest in hunting animals when one stood right before him, apparently.

So Dimitri remembers the voice of seven-year-old Felix, childish and gentle as he calls after the prince with a laugh, as he hunts in the forests of western Faerghus.

Hunting people is much the same as hunting game, he finds, and he follows the advice Felix once told him. You wait. You listen. You watch. When you do it right, they never even see the end coming. The Imperial soldiers making camp for the night are just the same, no time to even scream before their heads are lopped off with a single swing of his lance. 

It’s a better end than they deserve, he thinks. They should have learned what it meant to be in _pain_ before he granted them the mercy of death.

He lets their fire burn only for as long as it takes to pilfer their bodies and supplies—bandages, vulneraries, and thankfully, food. The forests this far down south don’t have the same bite of cold as the ones outside of Fhirdiad, but it’s enough to scatter most animals and send them hiding in their dens, waiting out the winter. Imperial troops tend to be his most reliable source of food these days instead. Dimitri stamps out the fire and feasts in the dark, gorging himself on their hardtack bread and dried jerkies. He consumes every crumb on his hand, every granule left behind, so ravenous and starving he swallows every bite whole.

No more than ten minutes later, he vomits everything back out, his bile turning putrid with the fresh blood drenching the snow.

 _Poor little Felix._ It’s Glenn’s voice, Glenn’s casual disdain, the same as he remembers from his childhood, but Dimitri wouldn’t know who it is by looking. Even as a ghost, Glenn remains as bloodily disfigured and unrecognizable as when he saw him dead in Duscur. _Always chasing after you. He must be worried sick without you. He must be a wreck without you. But you don’t even care that you abandoned him, do you? Abandoned everyone?_

 _I abandoned them for you,_ he tells Glenn as he heaves, his hand digging holes into a nearby tree as he struggles to stay on his fight. He thinks to himself that it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t hurt, Glenn’s words can’t possibly hurt. What could hurt a monster when monsters have no hearts to break? 

Glenn scoffs, so much like Felix, nothing like Felix. He has never heard Felix scoff in a voice wet with blood.

_He could be dead by now. My brother might be dead, and all because of you. Just like me. Because you couldn’t stop this fast enough, because you couldn’t kill one little girl. Why are you even alive, Dimitri? Why did you live if all you would do is fail us?_

Dimitri doesn’t know how to answer that. He doesn’t know how to answer that, so he slumps against the tree, back pressed against the bark and lance gripped tight in his hand, and closes his eyes. He pretends he’s dead as if that could possibly satisfy them.

It doesn’t.

* * *

“You can’t expect me to remember every girl I’ve dated, Your Highness,” Sylvain told him once, on the topic of girls as it always was with Sylvain. He can’t recall why the issue of remembrance came up; he knows it doesn’t matter. “When you get to be as popular as I am over the years, it’s inevitable that you start losing track, you know?”

Dimitri wonders now if it’s similar to this, how he can’t recall the face of every person he’s killed.

Not all of the ghosts that haunt him are loved ones. Not all of them speak to him in once loving voices now torn apart by regret, by grief. Some cry out in their anger, their voices a chorus of how they curse him, how they loathe him, how he could never atone for how wretchedly he killed them. Some don’t say anything at all, not even a single sound, their hatred emanating silently from their silhouettes as more fall by his hand, as more join the ranks of those unfortunate enough to meet the sharp end of his lance.

“Hate me then!” he shouts at their faceless forms, their mangled bodies only recognizable by the carnage he inflicted, the blood that runs red down their exposed and rotting flesh. “Curse me, loathe me, it doesn’t matter! I did what I had to. The dead need their tribute, and your lives were forfeit the moment you chose to serve a beast. So I did what duty demanded of me! I only did what I had to!”

The dead say nothing to him. They cannot even glare at him in judgment, not when he can’t remember their faces. Alone and roaming in the wild plains of Faerghus, Dimitri shouts for them to leave him, to hate him, to haunt him, to know that he has no regrets. He screams until his throat goes raw that he’d do it all again, that it doesn’t matter, that he’ll drown happily in their blood without a second thought if it means giving the dead the justice they so desperately need.

His faceless ghosts offer nothing, because they can’t, and he knows he tells himself this just as much as he tells the dead. Dimitri doesn’t regret the monster he’s become. He can’t. He doesn’t have the right. After how many people he’s killed, it’s only inevitable that he starts losing track.

That’s only an excuse though, the same way it’s always been an excuse to avoid responsibility, but Dimitri ignores the truth. He ignores it because if he doesn’t, he will break.

How strange it is that far away from school and as something even lowlier than the beasts he murders, Dimitri finally understands just why Sylvain spent all his time chasing after girls. He understands a little too well, and far, far too late.

* * *

In the midst of the burning wreckage of the battlefield, Dimitri rouses from the dead all around him to the sound of thunder cracking the sky open, and he knows that summer has arrived in Faerghus.

The north is known for its bitter winters and biting cold, yet as a child, Dimitri always thought people ought to be more wary of summer in Faerghus. Summer storms were known to roll in unexpectedly, violently, at times turning a bright sunny day into a torrential downpour within minutes. It’s where he finds himself now, the sudden onslaught of rain putting out fires and washing the blood from his skin but leaving him soaked to the bone. His cape and pelt hang heavy against his back, and for as far-gone as he is, he knows he needs two things to survive: shelter and fire.

Finding shelter takes too long. He stumbles into a cave, shivering and exhausted from his wounds. Animal bones and half-burnt logs lie strewn about, clear signs that this isn’t the first time the cave has been inhabited by those seeking shelter, though it’s just as clear that years have passed since the last time it was used as refuge. Dimitri sheds his cape and pelt before rummaging through whatever little is left in the cave, gathering every burnable piece of wood and grass he can find. The sad little pile will make for a poor fire, but it’s all he has.

What he lacks is a way to start a fire. He lost the flint he carried in some battle long ago, and he’s yet to find more from the bodies he’s looted. Unskilled as he was when it came to Reason, he never so much as learned how to cast Fire.

Annette tried to teach him once though, he remembers, and with shaking legs, Dimitri shifts into an unfamiliar stance.

 _Ohh, so your natural affinity for Reason is lightning! That’s actually pretty rare, Your Highness!_ Annette beamed at him, her curiosity and delight evident even for a spell she couldn’t cast herself. The sun was so, so bright that day in the training hall, but Annette’s eyes were the color of a storm. He didn’t know a storm could be bright until her. _Why don’t I show you the glyph for Thunder, and you can practice? You never know when a Reason spell might come in handy!_

He doesn’t know why he humored her that day. Even then, he knew he was abysmal with Reason magic, and he had little belief there would ever come a time where he needed to know how to cast Thunder. Still, he practiced under her tutelage, copying her form and the movement of her hands with the same discipline he applied to his lance drills, trying to cast over and over and over. Out of dozens and dozens of tries, he never succeeded once.

But he thinks of Annette now, remembers the way she shifted her weight and the steadiness of her breathing, as he tries to cast Thunder again. And again. And again.

Until finally, lightning strikes from inside the cave, so hot and bright Dimitri shuts his eyes when it lands. When he opens them, he finds a fire burning from that pile of debris—and he smiles. He smiles and turns around, running back into the rain with a laugh, a sob, something manic and frenzied welling up and spilling past his lips.

He casts bolt after bolt, watches the lightning tear itself through the sky. It flashes through the clouds, indistinguishable from real lightning. Thunder crackles and roars in response, breaking through even the pounding rain in time with his hand-wrought light. He casts until his fingers shake, until he collapses by the burning detritus he started this all for to begin with, until he’s drained of what little magic he has.

 _Look_ , he nearly says, _look, Annette, look. I did it. I can do it, I can do it now._

But when he opens his mouth to tell her, he freezes—remembers that it was only a memory, only a ghost, that she was never here to begin with. Of course she wouldn’t be. She wouldn’t want to be either, no one would want to be near the retch that he is if they could help it.

“Oh, my poor, pitiful child,” Patricia croons, the featherlight touch of her hand against his sweat-covered forehead almost warm, almost cold, almost there. He doesn’t know if she means to pity or mock him. There’s nothing to read from her faceless visage. Then again, the dead have no hearts for pity, incapable of anything. That’s why he lives in service of them. “Of course she wouldn’t want to be here. No one does, yet you’ve chained us to you anyways. You’ve yet to set us free. My pathetic, wretched child, none of us want you, not the dead nor the living. No one wants a monster. But you know that already, don’t you, Dimitri? Don’t you?”

“I know,” he says to his stepmother, to the air, to no one at all but himself. He closes his eyes and nearly prays for the blissful nothingness of unconsciousness. Even if the goddess did more than just watch on though, he doesn’t deserve it. He never has. “I know.”

* * *

He thinks of Flayn, sometimes. Flayn and her healer hands, Flayn and her food that no one else would eat.

Despite her young age, her talent for healing was truly second-to-none. Even Mercedes, just shy of peerless among the students when it came to Faith, remarked once that Flayn could likely heal an entire army on her own. He had no head for magic, but even he could see just what Mercedes meant by it with how easily Flayn healed injuries no matter how dire. Even now, he remembers seeing light pour forth from her hands so brightly into a gash in his arm, his blood running backwards into his body in fear from the sight of it.

 _Flayn would know what to do with this_ , he thinks as he carefully, carefully pulls the arrowhead from his right eye. His hands were never made for delicate work though, and by the time he gets it out, his entire body trembles from exhaustion and pain. _She would know how to heal an unseeing, bisected eye back to sight._

But Dimitri doesn’t know, so he makes do instead. 

When his hands shake too much to open his last two vulneraries, he pulls the corks free from the vials with his teeth. He downs the first one in a single go, then takes a deep, deep breath. With a trembling hand, he pours the second directly over his bloodshot, bloodstained, blood-filled eye.

And he _screams_.

 _You take too long to receive proper healing and treatment_ , she told him once with a cluck of her tongue, magic warming her hand as she pressed it to his wound. They'd gone out for a simple mission of routing bandits, only for things to take a turn for the worst when a horde of beasts ambushed them in the aftermath. As always, the professor led their class to victory, but it was a messy win. _I worry your wounds will fester if you put off treatment so._

Even as he slips in and out of consciousness, his body wracked with fever and chills, it’s not his physical wounds the Dimitri worries over. No, he thinks of the headache that split his skull in pain so often during school, how he refused Flayn’s treatment for it. He thinks of the nightmares that turned into voices that turned into headaches that turned into ghosts, sees his loved ones standing before him now, contemptuous and agonized and so full of scorn, and knows without doubt this is his longest festering wound.

“Pathetic,” Glenn scoffs, that single word as cutting as a dagger, and Dimitri agrees.

“Save us!” Patricia begs, head turned aside as if she can’t even bear the sight of him and his failures. “Why won’t you save us?”

“Where is our revenge?” Lambert pleads, his face twisted forever into the horrified anger Dimitri saw him die with, disgusted by his killers and the savage massacre all around him. Now, his father glares, disgusted by _him_ and every breath he draws without having snapped Edelgard’s neck in two. “Why is your resolve so weak, when your family begs to be saved? You don’t get to die, not yet, not until you bring us that girl’s head!”

“You have failed us,” Dedue whispers, and _oh_ , how Dimitri’s heart breaks as he looks at the ghost of Dedue, but he’s right. His best friend never lied to him in life, and Dimitri knows he would not lie to him in death either. It is his penance to hear out Dedue’s last regrets and laments, to listen to how he condemns Dimitri for his failures, even as he considers tearing out his own heart for how it beats in anguish.

“I’m sorry,” he says. A prayer, a plea, a confession. He repeats the words until his throat goes raw, until he runs out of voice to say them with, and even then, his lips form the words silently as he falls unconscious. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, _I’m sorry_ —”

The loss of his eye matters little, in truth. Even unconscious, he feels the power of his crest pump through his veins, his blood singing the command for him to live, that he _must_ live, and his body is helpless but to obey. Like so many times before, he will live when it shouldn’t be possible. He will live, even when he should not. Dying from his physical wounds might even be a blessing, the punishment a beast like him deserves. 

Flayn had the wrong idea of things, all those years ago. It is the wounds in his heart, his mind, that have festered for far too long.

* * *

Dimitri takes a knife to his hair, and a severed hand falls with the nearly black strands.

Tangled and matted as his hair is, he couldn’t pull the hand out no matter what he did. Slicing through the wrist of the soldier it belonged took no more effort than a single swipe of his lance, pulling out the arrows and blades still lodged in his flesh only taking slightly more strength. No matter how he tried though, the hand clung to his stringy tresses in gross ornamentation, a literal death grip that would not release.

He stares down at the bloody hand now, still clutching his filthy hair, and is reminded of the truth—that the dead always desire vengeance.

The longer he looks down at the cut locks though, the less he recognizes it; if he hadn’t cut it himself, he likely wouldn’t know it as his own. Covered in layers of dirt and blood and grime, it blends easily into the muddy ground below, not even a trace of blond breaking through the filth. He blinks, looking down at himself, and realizes that even in all its tangled, matted, clumped together horror, his hair hangs down past his shoulder blades. 

Someone could try to drag him by the hair again, if he leaves it like this. He could even be caught in trees and branches, the next time he traverses through the woods.

Knife still in hand, Dimitri raises it to his head once more and begins cutting his hair. He cuts away, chunk by chunk, and remembers Ingrid.

More than anything else, her hair seemed impractical. Beautiful though it was, Ingrid was never one to care for fashion or style. When it could get in the way of her training, or worse, prove to be a liability in battle, he asked why she kept it as long as she did, or if she would ever consider cutting it—much to Sylvain’s horror as he feared for her beauty, he remembers, naturally only causing Ingrid’s ire at their friend to grow.

How easy, those days were back then. How simple. How pointless.

 _I’m afraid it’s a little embarrassing, Your Highness_ , she tells him again as he hacks away at his hair in pieces, careless of the length he cuts, _but you may recall my family’s financial struggles. We couldn’t afford to hire a proper hairdresser, yet my father insisted that I not get it cut unless it was done by one. I believe he worried for my appearance for… potential suitors’ sakes, more than anything else. And so, I’ve been braiding it back ever since._

It was a familiar tale, of course. Even while at the monastery, Count Galatea continued to arrange engagements on Ingrid’s behalf without her consent. Despite her brittle smile though, she waved the topic off, saying with a laugh that if her hair ever truly got in the way during battle, she would chop it all off without hesitation.

Faerghus has been at war for years now. He wonders if Ingrid ever cut it. He wonders if she’s even alive.

By the time he finishes, his hair hangs limply past his jaw, still knotted and nearly black. He leaves the battlefield behind, leaves his hair to rot among the corpses there, and heads for the sound of running water. Bathing and cleaning are luxuries he rarely has opportunity to make use of, much less ones he cares for when Imperial soldiers roam the land, when somewhere out there Edelgard’s sick head remains attached to her body— but he thinks of Ingrid’s hair, pristine and nearly blinding in his memory, shining. He thinks of his own, unrecognizable beneath the layers of filth, and something compels him to seek out water.

Dimitri wastes no time in dunking his head into the river he finds, his hands scrubbing violently against his scalp until the water runs less dark when he pulls himself from the water. He pushes his hair out of his face and stares at a reflection he does not recognize—gaunt and hollow cheekbones, a cloudy pupil staring blind out of a disfigured eyelid, dark circles hanging heavily beneath both eyes. Not a single trace of the prince he pretended to be remains.

He looks like a ghost, well and truly. He looks like some wrathful phantom. He looks like— 

“Where is her head, my son? Why do you refuse to take vengeance for me?” Lambert asks him from the water, his face—Dimitri’s face—twisted in miserable anger and pain. His father deserves so much better, so much more than this, yet this is the only way Dimitri can see him now, the way he’s seen him for years: as much of a wretch as he is. “Dimitri, Dimitri, my blood, my son, why do you tarry? Why do you allow your own father to suffer like this? Where is my justice, Dimitri? Where is my peace?”

His father asks for peace, and how can Dimitri not look for it? He eviscerates Imperial soldiers and searches through their entrails. He rips jaws in half from the heads of bandits and searches through their skulls. He searches through torn limbs, through splattered gore, through rotting corpses and freshly spilled blood. But no matter where he looks, revenge will come too late. Justice is nowhere to be found.

Dimitri need only look at his reflection to see how his father gazes back at him with cruel contempt, and he knows he cannot find peace.

* * *

No matter how hungry Dimitri goes at times, no matter how painfully his stomach aches with the hollowness of starvation, not even once does he eat weeds.

Dedue would admonish him for it, he knows. Even now, he still remembers his friend’s wary glance when he mentioned how one could find edible plants among weeds. In truth, it was knowledge that most children of Faerghus grew up with, and he explained as much to Dedue afterwards. The kingdom was a land almost infamous for its poor crops, and regardless of status, all children were taught the basics of survival from a young age: how to wield a weapon, how to hunt game with said weapon, how foods could be preserved through salt and pickling, and how to find food when resources were scarce. Even as crown prince, Dimitri was not exempt from learning as a child. 

Glenn made sure he learned. Felix, too, when they would go hunting together, once upon a time. Sylvain and Ingrid both thought it unlikely for him to ever need to put the knowledge to use, but he listened anyways. All of them always listened to Glenn.

By the time Dedue joined him at the castle though, Glenn was gone, and resources were stable enough in the capital that the topic never arose. After all, Duscur was always rich in minerals and stones, and Faerghus ensured those resources were put to good use. Afterwards, there was always food galore in the castle, even when he could not taste a single bite of it.

But Dedue, ever the loyal vassal, ever his most steadfast, kindest friend, sought only to educate him even further.

 _Albinean onions grow well in the cold_ , Dedue explained, pointing out to him a flowering purple plant in the greenhouse that looked more like a flower than an onion, _and they can be eaten raw as well. They thrive all year round, so they can always be found in grasses and caves. If you find a plant that looks similar but grows an orange flower, avoid it. They are poisonous if consumed and will cause burns should you touch them._

It’s Dedue he listens to every time he forages through barren plains and stubborn patches of weeds, Dedue’s voice that points out the plants in the wild that he recognizes from the greenhouse. Morfis clovers, known for their thin stems and magenta flowers. Indech’s lettuce, known as miner’s lettuce in Duscur, with their lilypad round leaves. Albinean elderberry, small in size but growing in large clusters.

When Dedue speaks, he always listens, no matter what it is that he says. It is the least he can do for his dear dead friend, the very least that he owes him.

“ _The flowers of Duscur roses are edible, but you should not eat the leaves. Instead,_ you swore an oath to me, and you’re breaking it,” Dedue says when he plucks pink and white blossoms, ignoring their jagged-edged leaves.

“Why do you waste time tearing plants from the ground when you could be tearing Edelgard’s skull in half? Will I _suggest you avoid touching stinging nettle with your bare hands. While not fatal, the hives they cause can be difficult to treat. Soak them in water first, if you can, and that will make them safe to touch_ ,” Dedue says as he grabs the plant by the roots with his gauntlet-covered hand and rips it from the ground.

“ _Blueberries only grow from wood, from branches. If they grow from green stems and vines, they are not blueberries, but nightshade. Their poison can easily kill_ ing is what you do best, Your Highness. Killing is all your hands are good for. The sooner you kill her, the sooner you give us peace,” Dedue says, and he avoids the ripe-looking berries and the stems they hang from.

Even in his memory, Dedue smiled so rarely, but Dimitri remembers the compassion in his gaze. In comparison, the ghost of Dedue holds nothing in his eyes. Not anger, not sorrow, not hatred, not even grief. There’s nothing but stoic judgment, his heavy gaze unblinking even with bruises lining his face, even with blood dripping into his eyes, the way Dimitri remembers his wounds from before Dedue shoved him out of the castle. 

He thinks he would prefer hatred, in all honesty. He would prefer the anger of the rest of his loved ones, the way they look at him with such contempt and disdain. Anything would be better than his most cherished friend looking at him with _nothing_ , any rebuttal or denial Dimitri has dying in his throat before he can even open his mouth.

“I saved your life, Your Highness. Even now, dead and gone, I continue to save your life,” Dedue tells him, his voice as calm and steady as it always was. If he closes his eye, he can almost pretend that Dedue is right beside him, supporting him as he always did in life. But Dedue is dead, and Dimitri cannot argue with him. He can’t plead or beg forgiveness when Dedue speaks the truth so plainly, so factually. The only reason he lives is because of Dedue’s sacrifice, because of the knowledge Dedue taught him, and he repays both of those gifts with nothing. “Why is it that you cannot avenge mine? Why do you continue to let my sacrifice be meaningless?”

 _It’s not_ , he so desperately wants to say, _it’s not, it’s not, it’s not. I will honor your sacrifice, I’ll make it mean something, I swear it, I promise._

But Dedue looks at him calmly, blankly, as unforgiving and unmoving as stone. There is no refuting his words, not when Dimitri has broken his promise. Not when he continues to live without his vengeance fulfilled. 

So Dimitri looks away from Dedue, unable to face his gaze, and says nothing.

* * *

_You’re better than you think you are_ , Byleth told him once after he accidentally snapped yet another training lance in half. It was so difficult to mind his strength at times, but the professor always taught him patiently, compassionately, as if the broken weapons and wasted materials were hardly a bother. As if the only thing that mattered was helping him. _It’s not finesse you lack for controlling your strength, only focus. Focus on your task at hand, and I know you’ll be able to control it. You can do this, Dimitri, I know you can._

He’s much better now at controlling his strength than he was back then, he would say. The degrees to his strength are like a carefully tuned instrument, one in which he is the sole master of playing.

It’s how he can hold up an Imperial soldier in the air by their neck, squeezing just tight enough at their throat to choke, to strangle, to play at offering a chance for mercy, but not so tight that he breaks their neck in half. He can hear them struggle to breathe, yet not stop them from breathing all together. He can watch them writhe in agony, but not end their agony on accident. The balance between the two is delicate, and after years and years of practice, Dimitri has learned how to strike it so easily, as if on instinct. He’s had to, in order to inflict the pain these beasts and savages deserve.

Of course, this isn’t what the professor taught him for, but he doesn’t think it matters. The results are the same either way.

“Good,” his ghosts praise him, their voices blending together in a horrid, haunting chorus, “Hurt them, Dimitri, break them, kill them! Make them suffer as we have suffered! Let them die in pain as we have died! Spill their blood across the ground as our blood was spilled! Have them scream for mercy, just as we have screamed! Kill, kill, kill!”

They beg and demand so loudly, so incessantly, Dimitri thinks his skull may split in half. Yet despite their demands, despite how easily they drown out everything until there’s nothing left but them and their anger, them and their agony, the soldier’s strangled gasps for breath cut through it all regardless. He listens to their dying pleas, how they beg and cry and confess in a broken voice that they don’t want to die. He listens because he has no choice but to.

And Dimitri smiles. He smiles, teeth bared and gaze manic—yet he doesn’t notice as tears cloud his vision. He doesn’t notice how they spill over and fall as he laughs and laughs and laughs. He doesn’t notice that he’s still crying, still laughing, when he finally breaks the soldier’s neck beneath his hand. 

Their body falls to the ground with a dull thunk, their detached head landing a moment after, expression frozen in anguish and fear. It’s only then he realizes that with a single hand, he squeezed so hard that nothing even resembling a neck remains on the corpse. He decapitated them with nothing but his own strength.

So Dimitri laughs even harder. He cries even harder.

“Monster,” his ghosts hiss at him, disgust and horror written across every single one of their faces. “Savage, wretched beast. Killing is all you’re good for. Murder is all you’re good for. Only a beast can kill another beast. Why do you cry when monsters have no tears to shed? Why do you cry when monsters only laugh at the blood they spill? This is all you are, Dimitri. This is all you’ve ever been.”

 _You’re better than you think you are_ , Byleth told him, hand gentle over his own even with the shattered remains of his lance in hand. The professor believed in him so much. Byleth believed in him when he held no faith for himself.

And he failed the professor all the same.

Dimitri crumples to the ground, held up only by his iron grip around a lance that can withstand his strength. He falls to his knees, laughing until his throat goes raw, crying until tear stains clean half the blood splattered across his face.

 _You’re better than you think you are_ , Byleth told him, but the professor was wrong.

He is so much worse than he thought he was.

**Author's Note:**

> who's with me on thinking titling is the absolute fucking hardest part of writing, good fucking GOD


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